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Whatever Floats Your Boat

Lake Powell marinas upgrade with new mooring buoys

Published online: Jan 11, 2006News

With its high cliffs and panoramic views, LakePowell, the 140-mile-long reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam, is a boater's paradise. However, the lake's extreme 250-ft depth and 100-ft seasonal variations in water level made the mooring of 25-ton, 75-foot houseboats unreliable. Thanks to a unique buoy-anchoring field and new mooring buoys from Premier Materials, the anchorage problems were solved.

Arizona's Wahweap Marina and the Hall's Crossing and Bullfrog marinas in Utah are part of Lake Powell Resorts and Marinas, an authorized concessioner of the National Park Service. Managed by ARAMARK, the marinas are home to hundreds of houseboats-many up to the lake's maximum permissible size of 75'.

In addition to the variations in water level and the lake's depth, the marinas' old moorings and steel buoys constantly needed maintenance. Now, each marina contains a new grid-based mooring field using Premier Materials' mooring buoys. In total, nearly 630 new buoys were installed-250 buoys for boats 55' or less and the remaining 380 buoys for boats up to 75'.

The Premier buoys are one-piece roto-molded spheres filled with void-free EPS foam. The watertight, heavy LLPDE outer shell is virtually impervious to oil, gas, animal damage and impacts, and provides a product life in excess of 20 years. Available in diameters of 32", 38" and 42", the buoys deliver buoyancy ratings from 581 lbs to 1,321 lbs.

A twelve-gauge, molded-in steel tube runs through the center of each buoy to accommodate anchoring and tie-down hardware. All buoys are white with a 2" reflective, blue vinyl stripe for added visibility.

ARAMARK's Dean Crane said, "We selected Premier mooring buoys for several reasons. They require absolutely zero maintenance and they have a lot more buoyancy than the old steel units. Plus, in case of accidental contact with the boat, the hull won't be damaged or even marked."

More information on ARAMARK's Lake Powell Resorts and Marinas operations can be seen at www.aramarkparks.com.

Lake Cumberland is known as the "Houseboating Capital of the World," and it sees millions of houseboaters each year. In honor of this, Kentucky governor Matt Bevin recently dedicated a bridge on Lake Cumberland in Monticello to houseboating.